


Hands

by pridecookies



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Romantic Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27775519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pridecookies/pseuds/pridecookies
Summary: Malcolm Hawke is tipping on the precipice of falling in love with this fucking elf. Sometimes, you just need to kiss 'em.
Relationships: Fenris/Hawke (Dragon Age), Fenris/Male Hawke
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Hands

The energy of the Hanged Man was usually chaotic, sexual tensions lingering in corners and spilling out over the entirety of the tavern, drinks dumped in the hallways, bards singing poorly by the bar. Tonight was busy, vibrant and loud and its noise was only exceeded by the resounding screaming inside Malcolm Hawke’s head. Faces that were familiar blitzed into his brain as he scanned the inside of the tavern. Isabela in all her exquisite glory was settled next to Merrill, trying to persuade her to do yet another shot. Across from them, Varric was poised like the monarch of a very small kingdom with a large ale in his hand. There was so much warmth in the room it was almost tangibly gold. Still, it was incomplete in a way that he had come to find devastating. Surrounded with people and the heat of compacted bodies, he still felt chilled until he saw white hair. Then he felt too warm. With ales in hand, he walked back to their table and set them down. Isabela was laughing about something, her amber eyes liquid flame. Merrill was looking at her sheepishly and fumbling with her scarf.

“Now look what you’ve done, love,” Malcolm teased and Isabela brushed him off with a general gesture. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she rested her own on his.

“Nothing,” she cooed, giving him a wink.

Malcolm looked at Varric, “I highly doubt that. Varric, help me.”

Varric lifted his hands, “I haven’t had enough beer to answer this one, Slick.”

Rolling his eyes, Malcolm brushed past Isabela, allowing his hand to slide across the expanse of her shoulders and fall at their drop off. He sat beside Varric, across from Merrill and gave her a knowing look. 

“Merrill,” he encouraged, taking a drink, “You have that look.”

“All I said,” she started, looking at Isabela, “is that I wanted to know how Fenris does that little fisting thing of his, it's rather peculiar and the magic involved is quite fascinating.”

“And I said so would you,” Isabela murmured into her cup, eyeing Malcolm, snickering outrageously as she lifted it to her lips. 

“Of course he would,” Merrill huffed, “He’s a mage. We study all sorts of things together, don’t we Malcolm? Not just blood magic, we look at all kinds of spells. But it’s not something I have seen a man do before, the way he can force his fist into things.”

“Malcolm certainly has,” Isabela snorted.

“ _Isabela, I swear_ ,” he coughed, stifling a laugh.

Merrill frowned, “This is dirty, isn’t it? There’s something dirty about this.”

“There usually is with these two, Daisy,” Varric sighed, lifting ale to his lips and playfully shoving Malcolm’s arm. The mage was now unable to snuff out his laughter.

In between giggles, he turned to Merrill with an affectionate expression. 

“Darling, dangerous, fantastic little creature,” he shook his head, “If you don’t understand this one then I am too sober to explain it to you.” He laid a hand on hers, gently, and with a pitying look he teased, “I very much doubt you would enjoy the mental image anyway, consider yourself spared.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Isabela chided, “I certainly do.” 

“Yes, Isa,” Malcolm grinned, “I know _you_ do.” 

With a defiant sigh, Merrill played with her scarf again, “I enjoy dirty things too, you know,” she sulked. She looked up at the skeptical table, “ _I do_.”

“If Carver was here, he would combust,” Varric mumbled under his breath and Malcolm ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head in amusement at the idea.

“If Carver was here, he would just start screaming,” he smiled and the smile faded to a solemn stillness. He looked into his cup and tried to focus on the tangible to recenter himself. It was still a sore point, a quiet ever-present pain like when pressure is applied to a bruise. 

_Carver, I’m an apostate. Don’t do this._

Flashes of his brother, clad in Templar Regalia, weighed on him heavier as the years went by, every letter from Carver adding another layer to an already overburdened back.

_I knew you would make this about you, Malcolm. You always do._

“Look at that,” Isabela said, turned around in her chair, “Fashionably late.” 

Thrown from his thoughts and back into his body, Malcolm looked up and immediately felt a large, intangible battering ram strike his stomach and disturb his insides, his attention singularly arrested on the door. Shapes, familiar and delicate. Too delicate for the nature of the man, but rarely does a man’s shape tell his truth. The silhouette spawned memories, moments of casual intimacy. Fire. Books. Tired eyes closing and a head resting on his shoulder. 

_Malcolm, you can stay for a little. It’s alright._

Fenris walked into the Hanged Man wearing his usual guarded expression, his limbs stiff and unpliable. Even in his youth and the natural vitality that accompanied it, his gait was more like an aged man held down by the burdens of a hundred years. White hair, stark in contrast to skin like sand, with eyes so wide it was incomprehensible that they could still feel narrowed at all times. It was clear the elf was uncomfortable, his body language relayed that. Malcolm knew it took great effort for him to join them voluntarily and his heart beat faster knowing why he was trying so hard. With a glance in their direction, Fenris ever so slightly softened.

_If you ask me to stay, Fenris, I won’t ever want to leave._

There was noise in the tavern that forced itself in his ears but Malcolm couldn’t hear it. There were drunken patrons and casual gamblers and serving girls but Malcolm couldn’t see them. There was a mug in his hand and a table to support it and a chair underneath him but Malcolm couldn’t feel it. Every sense was numbed and refocused on one thing and it was looking at him with a veiled affection that he knew could utterly undo him. But he was so desperately good at grasping with aching fingers at things that could ruin his life. They tasted differently, enticed differently, enthralled differently. There was nothing so attractive as what should be repellent to a man of sense. Malcolm was never a man of sense.

“I would rather not be the one to tell Leandra her firstborn has died,” Varric mocked, “Please move so I know you are still with us.”

Malcolm blinked, looked around the table at teasing glances and rolled his eyes, “Varric, you know better. I’ve been dead inside for years. Excuse me,” he said and stood up from the table and approached the elf. Fenris watched him, carefully, as he always did. His demeanor was welcoming and warning in tandem, a directive sent through green eyes, one Malcolm had spent several months devastatingly trying to decipher. Just when he thought he had translated its complexity, the elf would change the codex. The mage approached, dressing himself in the most confident grin he could manage in light of the crumbling influence. 

“Hello,” Fenris greeted, his voice almost pained, tenderly holding something inside it that would probably break if not treated carefully.

“Hello,” Malcolm returned, the timber of his own voice more shallow than usual.

Fenris looked around and crossed his arms, “The dregs of humanity. Fitting.”

“Steady there, Fen,” the mage teased, “With honeyed words like that you might just give a man the wrong impression.” 

A smile tugged at the corner of Fenris’ lips and those dangerously dysphoric wide eyes sent a very specific message this time, “You assume that’s an impression I don’t want to give.” 

_Please._

Funny how the twitch of musculature underneath skin could render a normally clever man completely stupid. Malcolm made a nervous laughing sound and his attempt to swallow it nearly choked him. 

“You’re in a good mood,” he said hoarsely. 

“I am,” Fenris nodded, his expression melting into warmth, “I paid a visit to Sebastian at the Chantry and was able to read the plaques in the hallway.”

Such a simple thing, the ability to look at words on a page and know their meaning. It was denied the elf for most of his life and Malcolm’s instruction had colored his world where merely darkness existed before, light like lyrium peaking through his powerlessness and handing him something he could call his own.

_Your fingers wrapped around my fingers, shaking._

It marked him as more than what violence had imposed, it gave him normalcy that he was denied. It belonged to him and it was given with grace as a gift. Malcolm had taught both Bethany and Carver to read when they were little and the tutelage came easy for him. 

_Paper slipping past paper, fire flickering, you were breathing so slowly._

The satisfaction in the elf’s face when he learned new grammatical concepts or was able to read more complex words was seared into Malcolm’s brain, cast across his mind’s eye with a vibrance he hoped would never dull. Like a mage child learning magic and letting frost flit between their fingers in summer, the exhilaration of mastering a new spell. Fenris was so very much like magic.

“I’m proud of you,” Malcolm said with a tenderness that almost hurt to voice. Even in the noise of the tavern, he found his silence in the grateful expression Fenris offered him.

“Thank you,” he returned, his fingers twitching toward the mage but quickly pulled back.

“Although,” Malcolm mused, leaning against the wall and grinning suggestively, “There are better things to read than the words of Andraste. Smutty literature comes to mind.”

“Find some then,” Fenris grinned and brushed past him, glancing over his shoulder and leaning slightly closer to him, “I will consider it personal research.” 

_You, me, gripping, pleading, breathless, satisfied. I need—_

He left Malcolm standing somewhat aghast against the wall, grateful for its support and watching with penetrating focus as Fenris walked away from him and sat down. 

_—to touch you._

“ _Maker_ ,” Malcolm breathed with a barely sheathed groan. 

* * *

  
  


The increase in Malcolm’s energy and vitality was apparent after Fenris had arrived. He smiled to the point of his face cramping and every word was a clever retort. Confident, brilliant, still breaking under the proximity of the fixation of all his attention. His leg would bounce up and down under the table anxiously and he found on occasion his hands were shaking. Then, while Varric was recounting one of his hundreds of stories, he felt warmth brush his fingers. He glanced down, quickly, and noticed that Fenris had positioned his hand in such a way that it would collide where his was resting. With his attention still on Varric in appearance only, he stretched his own fingers out and they tenderly swept against Fenris’.

_Please, let me touch you. Maker, if I don’t get the chance—_

Above the table was the usual sight, his friends gleefully drinking and laughing and mocking each other relentlessly. Underneath it was casual intimate choreography, fingers grazing fingers and seeking solace in the flashes of warmth.

_I don’t know how to unwant you._

Then the flash became a sea of heat as Fenris tangled his fingers through Malcolm's and allowed his marked hand to rest there. He took breath in sharply and with great effort maintained the pace of his intake at the gesture. His lungs felt like a storm. Fenris looked over at him with a gentle smile and it made the mage stiffen in response, a visceral involuntary reaction like the sudden poking of a needle through his skin. Seeing Fenris smile arrested him body and soul and he wanted to meld the flesh and bone of their hands together.

_I would walk barefoot on broken glass if it made you fucking happy you son of a bitch and I would run with bleeding feet to wherever you asked me to go and I would do it over and over and I don’t know why._

“What do you think, Malcolm?” Merrill asked.

Once again, he was tossed back into his own body with little idea of what was being said to him. Instead of providing Varric with more fodder to mock with, he merely stood up, though the thought of releasing Fenris’ hand was a desolate one. 

“I think,” he affirmed, “I’m out of beer.”

_I don’t like how cold my fingers feel without yours, I want them back. I hate this. I can’t—_

He walked over to the bar, flexing the hand Fenris had held onto to salvage the feeling of warmth and leaned against it, letting his head dangle and wisps of dark brown hair form a chaotic halo above it. He rubbed his head and mussed it terribly.

“Look at you,” Isabela teased, coming up behind him and wrapping an arm around his neck, “What a beautiful disaster you are.”

Malcolm snorted, “I may die. Bury me in blue. I look rather good in blue.”

“Happiness looks good on you, too,” Isabela winked and gestured to the bartender to bring over more drinks. She leaned against the hightop and smiled at him, “I have known you for years and had you in alleyways as many times as there are days in those years. Never seen you quite like this. It’s unfair that you look this good when I can’t do anything about it, actually. You wear joy better than sorrow. Love suits you.”

“Love,” Malcolm repeated with a wince, taking hold of the drink the bartender had brought over and bringing it to his lips, “That is quite the word.”

“It’s a very big very little word but I know when to use it correctly.”

“Shit,” Malcolm groaned, leaning his head on the desk, “This may kill me before a Templar ever gets the chance. I feel like a virginal, confused adolescent boy.”

“I wondered about that,” she prodded, “Nothing there, then?”

_Wide eyes, unsure, looking away. Breath like wine and too close to me to keep me sober, denied over and over and over and over. Will you ever let me in?_

“No,” he sat up, “This is the part that disturbs me in a way that I usually reserve for my incessant complex about my father. Oh, and the thought of Gamlen sowing his seed amongst the living and reproducing.”

“I imagine a sexless existence for you is unbearable at best and lethal at worst.”

He clicked his tongue, “That is the thing that disturbs me. I don’t mind waiting. It’s almost unbearable but I still want to.”

Isabela stared at him a moment and then downed her drink, “You’re fucked,” she winced.

“Unfortunately not.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with you?” Malcolm teased, “Would have been _so_ much easier. Kirkwall would not survive but we would be a riot.”

“We would be exhausted.”

“Satisfied is a better word.”

“Hmm,” she purred, “I’m glad you didn’t, I would hate to be on the receiving end of your love. It’s terrifying, you look like an imbecile.”

“You _are_ on the receiving end of my love.”

“No, I’m on the _other_ end, the one that’s clean and easy.”

“Wouldn’t describe our relationship as _clean_. I mean, you did let me put my—”

“If you speak that out loud in public, I will strangle you with my headscarf,” she said with an amused, exacerbated sigh. “Point is, I like your other end fine.”

“I like your end fine too. Thank you for sharing it with us and denying it pants.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Malcolm glanced over at Fenris and his hands involuntarily flexed.

_Fingers feel too cold._

He looked back to her, “Some things kill you so softly it feels like falling asleep,” he murmured, “You’re dead but you think you’re dreaming, lost in the futile hope you’ll wake up. I don’t think that is what this is. I hope it isn’t. I don’t know how to want him less,” he sighed, “Just replaced one intimacy for another. We talk a lot. Well, argue. Spend time in silence. He fell asleep on my shoulder and _that_ was —” Malcolm shot back his drink, “—I don’t know how to _do_ this and survive it.”

Isabela laid her hand on his. 

“Malcolm,” she encouraged, “I have been watching him all night and I promise you that you will have plenty of both kinds of intimacy, eventually. Especially the one you’ve gone without. He’s wound up tighter than a spring and every time you leaned over him, he looked like he wanted to combust. Just wait for him, give him the time he needs. He wants you. He’ll come.” Malcolm smirked at the word and she rolled her eyes, “Maker, you really are a virginal, confused adolescent boy.” She gestured with her head. “Go on, then. Get back there.” 

* * *

The rest of the evening was warmed by wine and lulled by the sound of laughter. There were several rounds of Wicked Grace and a lack of good hands for Varric, not that he seemed to care. All he wanted was to tell stories, hear stories, lie. His usual antics. Malcolm looked around the table. Isabela was holding her beer, leaning on a hand, an elbow resting on the table. Varric was dramatically recounting a job they pulled the day before, adding little details that absolutely painted the mage with more finesse than he naturally possessed. He didn’t mind, he enjoyed the theatrics. Merrill was wobbling in her chair ever so slightly after giving into the shots that Isabela challenged her to take. Fenris’ hand was still wrapped in his and he had managed to find a brew that didn’t make him frown disappointedly upon taking a sip of it and make a kind of sad, _Hmm_ , noise. Malcolm leaned against the back of the chair and he felt Fenris squeeze his hand and stand, breaking the contact. 

_Come back._

“I should go,” he said, giving the table a casual, brief smile, “I enjoyed this.”

Isabela threw Malcolm a mischievous glance and he kicked her under the table and stood up, “I’ll walk you home,” he said, picking up his mug and polishing it off. 

Varric glanced up from the hand he was holding, trying out a card trick, “Be good, you two,” he teased and looked back down at the deck, “Actually, maybe don’t be good. Be _less_ good, save us the saccharine. You two are worse than a bad romance novel.”

“You mean the ones you write?” Malcolm quipped. 

“You flatter me. What I write is worse than bad,” Varric let out a hoarse laugh.

Malcolm waved at Varric, set his mug down and smiled at Fenris, “Come on,” he murmured, brushing his fingers against the elf’s arm. Fenris tensed.

“Tighter than a _spring_ ,” Isabela teased as they walked away. 

* * *

They walked in comfortable silence for a while, Malcolm’s hands shoved into the pockets of his coat and Fenris walking stiffly. The night air was frigid and the chill hung on on even him. How the elf, clad in his usual tunic and armor with skin exposed to the night air, was not freezing was baffling to him. Maybe he was, maybe he was cold and denying himself the need for warmth. It sounded like something he would do. Deny himself frailty in spite of his own body crying out for help. 

“Are you cold?” Malcolm asked. Fenris frowned. 

“No,” he lied, setting his jaw. 

“Fenris,” Malcolm probed, placing a hand on either shoulder, stopping him. 

The elf sighed and allowed himself a short shiver, “It is not unbearable.” 

With a scoff, Malcolm wrapped an arm around him, “Says the elf that shivers.” 

Fenris eased into his side and they walked toward Hightown. Malcolm didn’t notice but a slight smile had etched itself onto the elf’s lips. It stayed there for as long as they were walking together. They didn’t talk about the things that matters, tonight wasn’t the night for that. Tonight was about the warmth Fenris found in Malcolm’s touch or the way the light breeze rustled his hair or the quiet, chaotic noise of the streets as they walked past. Soft, easy, uncomplicated. It was a purposeful denial of everything between them that was wrong and Malcolm didn’t care. He was happy to deny pain its purchase, emptying his mind of the thing inside that was screaming, that begged him not to dance on broken legs. When they reached the mansion, Fenris untangled himself from the mage and took a step back, facing him almost miltarially, stiffly. 

“Thank you,” he said, shifting on his feet, “Good night.”

_No, I don’t think so._

With a scoff, Malcolm tilted his head to the side and Fenris looked at him almost apologetically. Hands resting on his hips, brow raised higher than his mother’s expectations, the mage smirked in his usual way when he wanted something, “Formal.”

Fenris rolled his eyes, “In what way is that formal?”

Malcolm stared amused, but the elf did not move. His own expression was puzzled in reality but to those that knew him less intimately, it might appear guarded. Malcolm stepped toward Fenris, his eyes asking permission and Fenris granting it. He took his hand in his own and traced the lines of it, stark white against amber. Marked by pain, unable to escape its shackles without shearing off his own skin, but somehow he made it beautiful. Some were kissed by trauma and found themselves unhinged. Fenris was entrapped by it, it forced itself into his bed for years, it held him without consent, with grasping, bruising hands. After all that, after years of relinquishing safety, every inch of his skin used against him, he was still here. Standing. Strong. Unbent and unbroken. Malcolm had never wanted anyone more. 

The tip of his finger rested on the external lines and he slowly traced their pathways, wondering how far they went, swallowing at the thought of what that pattern looked like everywhere else, hating himself for thinking about it like that when they were a source of trauma for him. The elf shivered again but Malcolm knew it wasn’t from the cold. He glanced up. 

“Does it hurt?”

“It did,” Fenris murmured, “It was torture.”

The word out of Fenris’ mouth was sharp to his ears, it pained him more acutely than it would out of other lips. The pain wasn’t his but he felt as though he was holding it by proxy, a sharp, jagged piece of glass that kept grasping tighter until his hands were bleeding. But he knew if blood could heal him, he would not hesitate to grip the glass tighter. He would bleed all over his hands, let it pool the ground, drown it. If it meant that Fenris could smile without fear. If it meant his blood could heal for once. Breathing as evenly as he could, he squeezed his hand. 

“I’m sorry, Fen.”

“You didn’t do it,” the elf dismissed. 

_Yes, but a mage did._

Malcolm studied him and went back to tracing the white lines of the lyrium on Fenris’ skin with his fingers, brows furrowed, a solemn expression. There was a discomfort in the action, he could sense it. The elf’s skin prickled where he touched and his breathing was growing uneven as Malcolm grasped him a little tighter, the ache in his stomach growing in intensity, the cage of loving someone who doesn’t know how to to be free.

_In all the ways magic has touched you, has every one of them hurt?_

The answer was clear. It did. There was no moment of flame dancing on fingers or the iridescent glow of a healer’s touch as it closed a wound. It was agony. Acute, brutal and unkind. Malcolm couldn’t fathom the cruelty but he knew that he wanted to replace every memory. He realized in that moment that the last mage that touched him this way was the once who enslaved him. The thought prompted a sorrow so heavy he could sink into the stone of the floor. But tinged that sorrow was hope. Every place Danarius touched him, he wanted to touch him and replace the shame with safety. Cover him in new garments. Every word Danarius had spoken, he wanted to scream over, drown it out, fill Fenris’ ears with soft whispers in the morning and the warmth of his face when it was pressed against them. Love him so loud that no other sound could mask it. Every wound that magic had caused, he wanted to heal it with his own hands and make it bright. Fenris’ eyes watched the mage’s fingers, flitting to follow when they moved even slightly. It reminded Malcolm of a frightened halla, always expecting to run, though still taking steps closer to the source of terror. Whether he stayed himself of his own choice or not, Malcolm didn’t know. He was so used to obedience. He didn’t know how to hold onto freedom yet. The thought was crippling.

_You’re afraid and you’re pretending not to be._

“Fenris,” he said, softly, “Look at me.” The elf did. “You don’t owe me anything, you know. If you don’t want—”

“I know,” Fenris interrupted him with finality. 

“Okay,” Malcolm breathed, eyes sheathed in uncertainty, rare garments for them. 

_Maker, heart. Beat slower. Be still._

“I—”he started but stopped, clearing his throat

_Let me show you magic that doesn’t hurt._

“There’s something I want to try,” he said slowly, evenly, “If you’ll let me. I was in bed last night, thinking about you. Thought of it.”

“You do that often, mage?” Fenris quipped with a wry smile, “Think about me while you’re lying in bed?”

_I don’t stop._

“Yes,” Malcolm said pointedly.

“Oh,” Fenris murmured, his smile fading, “That’s—”

“Pathetic?”

He furrowed his brow, “Interesting.”

Malcolm snickered, “I don’t know why you’re surprised. I’m not exactly subtle.”

“No,” the elf said, softly, “I am not surprised. I just realized we are probably thinking of each other at the same time.” He said it informatively, stating a fact.

_Please. Maker. I can’t love you this much. I can’t. I can’t hold it, it’s too heavy._

Malcolm stared at him, hands tensed, face flushed. A gasp, breathy and shallow, escaped his lips and he blinked rapidly.

“Well, then. That was—” he started.

“Pathetic?” Fenris grinned.

“No,” Malcolm murmured, taking in another sharp breath, “Not sure how to describe how I feel about that without being too forward.”

“You’re worried about being too forward,” Fenris mused, “ _You_ , of all people.”

“You’ve made me a gentleman, apparently,” Malcolm snorted, “I think you might be the suitable wife my noble mother wanted me to find.”

“I would rather not wear a dress.”

The corner of his lips twitched in a smirk, “I would rather you wear nothing.”

“Hmm,” Fenris smiled, “I thought you were worried about being too forward.”

Malcolm looked back down at where his hands were holding Fenris forearm, lips still curled into a faded grin, and spread a hand over the elf’s open palm. He noted the way the markings were shaped, lines he had memorized like the wrinkles in his mother’s face or the pattern of woodgrains in their home in Lothering. 

_Mage or not, you have your own kind of magic_.

“You remind me of a frost spell,” he said quietly.

He raised a brow, “I will need you to explain that, mage.”

“I assumed so,” Malcolm mused, “When you cast it, you can solidify something that was dynamic before. It freezes, cold soaks into it and what was strong is brittle. Easy to break with the slightest effort.” He smiled, tentatively, “That’s you.”

Fenris narrowed his eyes, “You think I’m breakable?”

“No, Fenris,” Malcolm chuckled, “Not you. Me.” He looked at the elf pointedly, his fingers pausing in their exploration, “You shatter me.” 

“I see,” Fenris said softly, stern brows relaxing into something softer, pliable.

“It’s a potent spell you cast,” Malcolm breathed, “I don’t know what to do with it, I just stand still waiting for you to decide to release me or not,” he swallowed, taking a step toward him, his eyes faltering, lingering on the elf’s mouth, inching closer with the proximity of his own, “Praying you don’t.”

Fenris inhaled sharply, “What did you want to show me?”

_Okay. Too much. Be patient._

“Right,” Malcolm murmured at the pause, “You’re a new kind of agony, aren’t you?” he mused, pausing in his movement and tilting his head slightly in study of a subject, “Do you trust me?”

“What?”

“It’s a yes or no question. If you don’t trust me, then I won’t.”

Fenris narrowed his eyes, “Trust you how.”

“As a mage, Fenris,” Malcolm said solemnly, “Do you trust me as a mage?”

“I trust you as far as I can trust any mage.”

_Let me show you._

“That’s not very far,” Malcolm raised a brow.

“It’s far enough.”

Malcolm’s eye twitched, “I wanted to show you something that I found beautiful.”

Fenris’ expression was questioning, “Why would that require my trust then?”

“Because it's you,” Malcolm said softly, gesturing to the marks. 

With that, Fenris’ mouth dropped open slightly. He closed it, swallowed, and nodded with some hesitation. 

“Alright,” he allowed, “I trust you.”

With that encouragement, Malcolm laid a hand on Fenris’ and let magic spill out from his fingers, cool white light in the grey of the evening. As he suspected it would, the lyrium in his skin responded to the magic in his blood and began to glow. The sight was disarming in a way he didn’t suspect, though. It enhanced every beautiful thing on Fenris’ face, little things Malcolm had come to love, wrapping them in glory.

_Let me make magic for you that doesn’t hurt._

He so rarely did that, he destroyed things. The magic that pooled from his hands was violent and destructive and unkind. But not this. This was the way his father saw magic and what it had to offer Thedas, unstained by the corruption of malignancy. His attention to blood magic had lessened his connection to the Fade and he was unable to cast healing spells now, all he could manage was to drain from others. This was not a leeching force. This was kindness. It was the only healing his hands would ever offer.

“ _For there is no darkness in the Maker’s light_ ,” Malcolm mused, repeating the verses he hadn’t uttered since he was a child. Still, they lingered in his mind unshakable, though he wished to untangle the Chantry from himself. “I don’t have much affinity for the Maker’s light, really,” he sighed, looking over Fenris with unadulterated adoration, “I think I prefer yours. I’m devastated just looking at you but I would rather be that than not glimpse you at all.”

He removed his hand and the light faded until only the dark remained. Fenris was breathing shallowly, looking at the way Malcolm was looking at him. His expression was pained but he took a step toward the mage. Malcolm didn’t move, he watched him as he inched closer, seemingly fighting himself in silence. For a moment, it appeared like the elf was going to kiss him. His gaze shifted from Malcolm’s to his lips, back to Malcolm’s. Then, he stopped himself. Malcolm’s lungs were bereft of air at the struggle, passively observing the elf’s war with himself, paralyzed by it. 

_You don’t owe me anything._

“I’ve had kisses that left me breathless,” he said after a moment, his voice unsupported by lungs that felt weakened, “I don’t think I have yet to experience it with the _absence_ of one, though. Suppose that makes sense for you. Everything about you is new for me.” He bridged the gap between himself and Fenris and laid a hand on his cheek, a thumb lightly grazing his lower lip. The comfort of his palm pressed against the shape of his face, perfectly suited, was more than enough for him. “Goodnight, Fen,” he murmured with a comforting smile, and stepped away, hands in his pockets and the lingering feeling of exquisite heat still on his palm. It was enough for now.

Fenris had inched forward at the mage’s retreat, still locked within himself. Then, with courage he seized from unknown places, he followed. 

“ _Malcolm_ ,” he called out, almost an order. The mage turned on his heels and Fenris grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face to his, leaving little room for Andraste between them. It was the first initiative that he had taken and Malcolm was left feeling abandoned by sense. It was a shock to his system, a blade in the back in its sudden ability to arrest him. He couldn’t fathom it. For a moment, he felt numb.

_But here you are, almost unreal, like a ghost in daylight._

Then, feeling returned and with it came the exhilarating thrill and sudden rush of ecstatic joy. Malcolm wrapped his arms around Fenris’ waist and willed himself to focus on every sensation that was being offered. He had allowed him to hold his hand, he’d fallen asleep on his shoulder, he had permitted proxity and he had prompted Malcolm to kiss him once, softly and carefully and briefly. Never this. This was an openness that he wanted so desperately that the taste of it was all he had in his mouth anymore. Now, he tasted something different, something new. Fenris’ lips on his, sure but shaking, wanting and wistful. The taste was bittersweet but he could cry out at the thought of ever being denied it again. Malcolm had always reached out, grasping for the ghost and pulling back his hands to house only empty air. It was Malcolm who moved. Malcolm who asked for time. Malcolm who begged permission for touch. Fenris never did. But here he was, pulled into the light by its source. 

They stayed there, bathing in their breathlessness as they broke away from each other. He pressed his forehead against the elf’s until their breathing mirrored, the heat from their mouths making it visible in the night air, mingling mist. His arms were still wrapped around his waist and Fenris’ around Malcolm’s neck. The closeness was cruel because he knew it would end. 

And it did. 

Fenris pulled back and faced Malcolm, taking deep breaths, his expression pained but not regretful. 

“Goodnight, Malcolm,” he said softly, turning around and walking inside. Malcolm stood there unmoving, his muscles and his bones and tendons connected to each other but unable to operate with motion. He was rendered immobile. 

“Goodnight, Fenris,” he said to no one. 


End file.
